Then
by EchoRose480
Summary: Batman was going to kill him. This was the first thought Robin had as he watched the knife plunge into his stomach, and the one that kept repeating as he lay on the top of an abandoned building, bleeding to death.


A/N: As for this, I can continue if you guys want me to. Potentially make it a death fic. But tell me what you want. :)

And regarding the rest of it, I'm thinking of making this into a series of Dick/Robin hurt/whump/comfort/pain/death fics. X) So let me know what you'd like to see, if anything! But I'm making no promises. :b

...

Robin's fingers were shaking as warm blood pumped in a steady rhythm from the gaping hole in his stomach. He was morbidly familiar with the particular texture of blood, abhorrently aware of how it feels when it's fresh, when it dries, when it coats your skin up to your elbows. But he'd never really realized before this moment how _fast _it really moves, as if it were just waiting to fountain out of you.

He stared up at the sky, eyes wide and stunned beneath his mask because, really, this never should have happened, and he wasn't entirely sure how it had. The sky was an odd violet shade, the stark removal of light intensely apparent behind a veil of wispy, black clouds. Gotham hardly ever had nights like this. Most nights, you couldn't even see the sky through the thick cloud of gaseous pollution.

A spasm ripped through Robin's torso, agony erupting in his gut like a hot stake being twisted through his organs. He gasped as an unreleased shudder pressurized his spine, then gagged as the taste of blood filled his mouth.

Then the unusually beautiful sky took on a whole new meaning. Maybe the world was trying in some way to ease his departure, an ironic mercy.

With a moan of willful defiance, he pressed his rattling palm against the wound, biting down on his lip so hard that he broke through the pain clouded over his morbid thoughts, bringing forth a kind of survivor's logic through the effects of blood loss and shock.

Batman. He needed Batman.

He raised his other hand, whimpering in pain and frustration as this seemed to cause far _more_ parts of his body to move than it should have. And really, did he _have _to have been stabbed on a rooftop? Couldn't he be lying helpless and dying in someplace a bit more _cushy_?

And it took about ten seconds too long for him to finally press the button on his comm link.

But Bruce answered as promptly as he always did. Normally, his rigorous consistency with schedules and procedures, almost verging on paranoia, annoyed Robin. But this time, the wondrous reliability of his mentor made Robin smile. Because, really, he was so not very whelmed with this bleeding to death in subzero winds shtick. But then his mind wandered to the blood probably shining on his teeth, and he shut his mouth quickly.

"_Batman here,_" Batman's voice sounded through the faint static, so stiff and unembellished and _God_ Robin loved that voice.

Robin swallowed, gagging slightly at the sudden lump in his throat, and the blood coating his throat. His palm against his wound was doing nothing to stop the flow. It just kept pumping out of him in time with his pulse, his stupid heart not knowing that each of its desperate beats was only bringing him closer and closer to death. Robin couldn't help but wonder. When would it all run out? When would there be more blood freezing on the concrete underneath of him, than in his veins?

Robin remembered studying blood loss as part of his training. He knew, through the fuzzy fog of exhaustion slowly creeping over his mind, the exact estimated time for how long someone could bleed out before they died. But, for some reason, the numbers were lost to him now.

Maybe that was his brain trying to protect him from himself.

Maybe it was just the shock.

Robin realized that he hadn't said anything. _Stupid idiot, quit thinking about dying and get to saving yourself!_

Batman's voice again,

"_Is there anyone-?_"

"Bruce…"

Batman became suddenly very silent, the connection filled with the soft crackle of static. Robin thought it must be because of the way his voice sounded. Breathy, weak…afraid. He hated himself for sounding like that. He couldn't sound like that to Batman. He couldn't-

No. Focus.

"_Robin?_" Batman called, voice deeper than normal, weighed down with something unidentifiable. Robin nodded weakly, then realized what he'd just done, and swallowed,

"Yeah, it-," he coughed, then gasped as his body seized in pain, "It's me," he finished after a moment, in a more strangled kind of way.

"_Robin, what's wrong with you? Are you injured?_"

Robin chuckled thickly and closed his wet eyes. Understatement, much?

He could practically see the dark knight vaulting into the batmobile, turning on the console to search for Robin's tracker signal on his radar. But he knew it wouldn't be there. Robin's signal had been cut off when his attacker had slashed through the soft flesh of his arm, where the small chip had been imbedded.

Huh, he'd almost forgotten about that wound. He'd been so preoccupied with the fact that his intestines could quite possibly spill out of him at any moment, that he'd hardly even noticed the gash streaking across his forearm.

Holy priorities, Batman.

"I'm…I got cut."

"_Cut how?_" Robin thought he could feel the sweat on his brow growing colder.

"Cut," he paused, drew in a shuddering breath, "bad."

"_Robin…_" Batman growled. His voice was intense and dark, the kind of voice that Robin saw other people wet themselves over. He suddenly had a far greater empathy for his mentor's enemies than before.

And then he caught the faint scent of urine in the air, and became aware of a wetness in his clothes that wasn't at all due to blood.

Damn shock. He would have been embarrassed, except he was fairly certain he _could_ blame it on his wound. That knife had been pretty wide at its thickest and it _had_ gone up to its hilt…

Wait. Knife, wound, Batman.

Right.

"Stabbed," Robin rasped, "In the…tummy,"

Robin wasn't sure why he'd used such a babyish word, perhaps as some kind of desperate attempt at humor. The utter ludicrousness of this made him chuckle, which then made him cough and he couldn't quite keep the pathetic whimper from squeezing through his lips. And he was suddenly overcome with how _much_ blood there actually was and he felt he had to voice it,

"Blood…" he croaked, then realized how stupid that sounded, because, really, who doesn't bleed when they've been stabbed? So, he felt the need to clarify, "A lot…"

"_Robin, do you know where you are? I can't see your tracker._" Bruce sounded strange. He was talking faster than normal, a slight edge of franticness. He sounded stern, and rigidly calm, his voice carrying a wavering timber that it normally didn't, like boiling water beneath a shaking lid.

"It…," Robin had to catch his breath, feeling as if the air had been sucked from his lungs, "It broke."

"_You have another_,"

This revelation was so unexpected that Robin had trouble processing it. For some reason, the hope in the words was strangely foreign to his mind.

"Another…?" he whispered faintly.

"_Yes. A backup, in your belt. Underneath the smoke pellets."_

It took Robin several moments to realize that he should be saying something. He swallowed, the lump in his throat bigger than it had been before, and blinked rapidly. Were his eyes wet?

"Took it," he wheezed.

"_The belt_?" Robin nodded again, but Batman rightly interpreted the silence.

He swore harshly. This alarmed Robin more than anything else, and he let out a forced, shaky breath,

"East sector…somewhere by a, uh," he gathered himself, raking in another hard won wisp of air. He felt so cold, his entire body having gone numb. The pain was far, far away, now. Blood loss was a real bitch, "warehouse."

He somehow managed to turn his head to the side, seeing if he could draw anything useful from his surroundings. Pinpricks danced across his vision, and he could hardly see anything through the blurry fog of moisture.

"On a roof…two office buildings…either side," he coughed as something tickled his throat, and the subsequent pain made him gasp violently.

"_Robin!_" Batman called, voice gruff, "_Robin, please, is there anything else?_"

Woah. Please? That was a rare bird in the vocabulary of Gotham City's darkest knight. Robin tried to give him something else, anything else. He opened his senses as best he could, what was left of them anyway. Faintly, oh so faintly, he thought he could hear the bell of a cargo ship, coming into dock near the city's shore.

"I think…I think I'm near the sea. Can hear," he licked his dried, cracking lips, and tasted blood, "ships."

There was a pause, where Robin imagined Batman was narrowing down possible destinations. Robin waited. A cool breeze drifted across the rooftop. Exhaustion compounded in Robin's limbs. Everything felt sore and numb and tired. The vague din of traffic became muffled and droning, like the receding sounds of a dream as it fades away. A black haze draped across Robin's vision. Slight, weak convulsions became less and less frequent, as little by little, his body gave up…

He hadn't realized he had fallen asleep until he was startled awake by Batman's urgent voice,

"_Good, Robin, that's good. I think I might know where you are. What I need you to do now is stay awake until I get there._ _Can you do that_?"

Robin blinked, already missing the heavy blanket of oblivion he'd been so cruelly torn from.

"Yeah…" he said, feeling his eyelids start to droop.

But then he remembered something,

"Did you…Did you really make a b-backup?" he asked, hating how weak and quiet his voice sounded. Batman replied, and Robin was surprised to hear some amusement in the deep baritone of his voice,

"_I made three_,"

Robin laughed, but somewhere along the way, it turned into a sob, and then a sniffle as he tried to hide it, and, geez, how did that even happen?

Just a second or two of quiet.

"_You're going to be okay, Dick, I promise,_" Bruce said gently, "_I'm almost there. Just keep talking_."

Robin thought that the river of blood escaping through his fingers might be slowing down to more of a weak trickle.

But maybe that was just his imagination.

"_I'm coming for you, you hear me? Dick?_" There was a second or two of tense silence. Bruce's voice became panicked, "_Dick!_"

Robin almost wanted to cry, because he sounded so _sure_. And he believed so hard that he could do what he was promising. He was promising that he could make the world better, just as he had always done.

But Robin wasn't a little kid anymore. Even he recognized that cold warmth washing over his senses, that drowsy sluggishness snaking through his limbs.

Even he knew what it meant that he couldn't feel the pain anymore. And not even Batman could stop it.

That was when he noticed with some small amount of alarm that the little clouds of his breath had long ago ceased appearing.

Oops.


End file.
